Gilmore Girls Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino on Bunheads: There Was “Never Even a Discussion” About Dance Doubles

Since wrapping up Gilmore Girls in 2006, Amy Sherman-Palladino has been looking for the same “lightning in a bottle” that made her snappy six-season run on the WB so memorable. She says she’s found it again in Bunheads, a new ABC Family series about a washed-up Vegas showgirl turned small-town ballet instructor. Here, Sherman-Palladino chats with VF Daily about her experience as a dancer, avoiding an ABC Family version of Glee, and discovering Sutton Foster.

__VF Daily:__Sutton Foster really shines in her lead role as Michelle. Did you have her in mind when you were writing that role?

Amy Sherman-Palladino: I was writing the script and I went to see Anything Goes[on Broadway]. I saw Drowsy Chaperone and Young Frankenstein, so I knew her, but it was something about the timing. I’d been staring at her for three hours. I called ABC Family and I thought, “I’m not basing this on anything, but I think this could be our gal.” It was really one of those fates-collide sort of things. I finished the script and I met with her, just to see if she was batshit crazy, and she was so delightful and such a good person. You’re like, “O.K., this is it. We’re not going to top this.” It was really only ever Sutton I thought about. From the time I was writing it, she was sort of stuck in my brain.

How did your past experience as a ballet dancer inform your writing of the show?

We shoot all of our dancing head-to-toe, because when you’ve got these beautiful legs and footwork, you show it. Our girls do all their own dancing. There was never a discussion about doubling. Our kids are there to dance. Our choreographer Marguerite Derricks actually teaches the kids twice a week or she sends them to class twice a week. And Sutton Foster has been taking privates every morning before call. It also made me very particular about the way I wanted the studio, which was very frustrating for [the set crew]. I’m like, “This is a dancer’s floor, it has to be a raised floor, it’s got to have a lot of padding because they’re going to be dancing on it.” They’re like, “Nobody cares.”

It’s such a specific feeling when you spend time in a ballet studio. It’s like a clubhouse—you spend a lot of time there, those are your friends, and you know there’s not as much extracurricular activity because your life is there in that studio. You’ve got to be ready to jeté at any moment.

There’s been a recent uptick in dance-centric film and TV—Black Swan,Breaking Point, So You Think You Can Dance. Did those shows influence your decision to do Bunheads?

I did not see Black Swan. Really, I wish I could be one of those people that can be like, “I’ve got my finger on the pulse of the culture.” If I like an idea, I like an idea, whether it’s timely or not. Networks look around and they see Glee and they see So You Think You Can Dance, they see Dancing with the Stars. It’s fed a lot by that, like, “Where’s our show with the dancing in it? Where’s our show with the ex-alcoholic person who gets to put on a sparkly outfit?” In my meeting with Kate [Juergens, ABC Family’s executive vice president of programming], they were looking for something that could be their Glee. I said, “No, I’m not really interested in that, because there is a Glee. It’s on Fox.” I didn’t want a show that was driven by the musical numbers. I wanted it to be about the people and the characters and what they were going through.

You’d expect a show about ballet to be all about performance, but you’ve managed to bring your chatty writing style from Gilmore Girls to Bunheads.

I have very little patience for people who can’t answer a question quickly. Life is not going to go on forever. I like a lot of comedy in my drama. It makes it better if you’ve been having this laugh and then you make a left turn and get kicked in the head.

Ballet is a lot of times portrayed as—and it’s all true—very intense, very competitive. But if there wasn’t that fun and that freedom, nobody would do it. There’s not a lot of jobs out there, nobody gets rich off of it unless you’re Barishnikov. It’s something you purely do for love. Because of that, we really wanted to play the fun of it. The freedom of the dancing, the hanging out with your friends, and, you know, who doesn’t love a good tutu?

Are there similarities between Bunheads and Gilmore Girls?

It’s really hard to find that lightning in a bottle for shows. I found it on Gilmore and when I left, I said to my husband, “That’s it. I’m never going to have that again.” It’s just not something you get twice in a lifetime. I don’t know how it happened with this show. If I hadn’t gone to Anything Goes that day when I was deeply mired in the script, if ABC Family had not agreed to hire Sutton . . . I do feel like there is a great deal of “Oh my God, I’m so freaking lucky.” It’s a fun arena, and Sutton Foster, she’s the moon and the stars. She’s it.